


Floor Six

by koonutkalifee



Category: Arslan Senki | Heroic Legend of Arslan
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Modern AU, actually the relationships are barely even implied in most cases, this isn't really a shippy thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-23 09:49:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4872241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koonutkalifee/pseuds/koonutkalifee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are eight of them, across five apartments.</p><p>Well. Four and a half.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Floor Six

**Author's Note:**

> i really love arslan senki  
> and arslan  
> 

Their apartment is too small.

All of the apartments in their block are, but Arslan feels as though theirs is the smallest of all. It is because of how many visitors they get, how there are always six or seven people in the apartment meant for two at most.

He lives there with Daryun. It’s not like the others have nowhere else to sleep – Narsus lives with Elam in the apartment next door, Gieve and Farangis live opposite them, Jaswant is on the floor below and Alfreed lives down the hall with her huge family, who take up three or four apartments by themselves.

And yet it is always Arslan and Daryun’s apartment that is crowded with people. Arslan wouldn’t mind, and most of the time he really doesn’t, but their rooms are so small that it’s almost impossible to fit them all in.

At least everyone, bar Narsus, tidies up after themselves, and they bring food to replace what they take.

 

Arslan pushes the door open. “We’re back,” he calls out, and Elam behind him mumbles something similar. Someone should be home, and sure enough they hear Gieve try to say something through what is probably a mouthful of food.

They take their shoes off and head into the living room, which is the largest of the five tiny rooms in their apartment. Gieve is sitting on the sofa holding a guitar, with three other bizarre stringed instruments on the couches around him. Arslan doesn’t know the names of any of them.

“Welcome home,” Gieve manages, and then takes another oversized bite out of whatever he’s eating. Elam sighs, but Gieve is usually quiet enough when it is just them that they’ll be able to get their homework done before everyone else returns.

They drop their bags beside the table and Elam wanders into their kitchen and opens the fridge.

“When’s Daryun getting home today?” Arslan asks Gieve, who shrugs, and Elam shakes his head as well. Arslan’s face drops a little and both Elam and Gieve have to resist the urge to hug him.

Elam doesn’t throw Arslan the apple he took from the fridge, something he learned from experience, and kneels at the table. Arslan sits beside him and the two start on their work.

 

Arslan is Daryun’s cousin, or second cousin, or first cousin three times removed. Neither are really sure, though Arslan is sure that if he asked Daryun’s uncle he could tell them.

Neither have seen Daryun’s uncle for years though. Arslan had been five or six then, and Daryun eighteen or nineteen, much too young to start taking care of a child so young.

He hadn’t really had a choice though. For reasons that he has yet to tell Arslan they had both been essentially disowned from the family, and he wasn’t about to go back and ask for their forgiveness. He was too proud for that.

 

Daryun clatters through the door almost loudly enough to wake the dead and Gieve hisses at him to shush, because “Arslan and Elam are asleep, idiot!”

It is very late, far later than Daryun usually returns. He immediately freezes and then shuts the door slowly, wincing at the creak it makes. He hadn’t realised how late it was.

Narsus is sat on one of the two sofas next to Farangis, who must have come in later that Gieve, because otherwise Gieve would have been sat next to her. Arslan and Elam are asleep next to each other, Arslan’s head on Elam’s shoulder and a blanket thrown across them, leant against the sofa that Gieve is on.

“Why are they still up?” Daryun asks. Narsus shakes his head at him indulgently.

“Arslan wouldn’t go to bed until you came home, and Elam absolutely refused to sleep before Arslan did.” It’s clear, from his tone of voice and from how fondly he’s looking at the pair curled up asleep together, that he finds Arslan’s stubbornness endearingly adorable instead of a problem.

“It’s too late for him,” Daryun mutters, and lifts Arslan off of the floor. “Farangis, Gieve.”

“Good evening.” Farangis works at a temple nearby and could probably work somewhere else making millions doing whatever she wanted. She stays.

Narsus picks Elam off of the floor, who stirs slightly and shifts in his arms. “Arslan,” he mumbles.

“He’s fine. Go back to sleep.” Narsus hushes him and follows Daryun to Arslan’s room. They don’t switch on the lights, instead carefully placing the children onto Arslan’s bed. Narsus pulls the covers up to cover them both.

“Daryun,” Arslan says surprisingly clearly, huge eyes opening widely for a moment, before falling immediately back asleep. He shifts slightly, closer to Elam, and then settles. Narsus hides his laughter.

“I’m here,” Daryun says softly, stroking Arslan’s hair, and then presses a kiss to his and Elam’s foreheads. Narsus does the same, and the two leave the room, allowing the door to softly click shut behind them.

 

Narsus had been kicked out of home when he was fifteen.

Arslan didn’t know why, and neither did Elam really. Daryun did, but he wasn’t going to tell.

Four years later, two of the people who had served Narsus’ family before he’d been disowned had died and left a son behind, and despite what Narsus knew would have been sensible he took the child in.

Eight years on and Elam is fourteen and Narsus gives lectures at the nearest university on Eastern history and probably makes enough money to qualify an apartment change. He thinks he could probably afford something slightly bigger now, but he hates the thought.

He’d brought up the subject with Elam once, because it wouldn’t have been fair not to, and Elam had scowled so spectacularly that he had burst out laughing, and sworn they wouldn’t move.

 

“Why is it always my apartment?” Daryun scowls, and Gieve grins widely at him without actually answering properly. Narsus laughs at his frowning.

“Because you’re a pushover,” he tells him. Daryun’s scowl deepens until he catches sight of Arslan laughing at something Farangis said, at which his face softens.

Elam and Alfreed are yelling something in the corner, something probably about Narsus. He would intervene and tell them to stop shouting at each other, but then they would try and make him resolve their argument and he is forced to admit that he is a pushover too.

In fact, Arslan has probably got the strongest will out of any of them, which no one would believe if they were an outsider looking in.

He is sat between Jaswant and Farangis and laughing at something one of them said, laughing so hard that even Elam and Alfreed cannot stay angry. They sit together on the floor by the table, and there is just enough room for Daryun and Narsus to sit by Gieve on the second sofa.

 

Farangis works at a temple because that’s where she was raised, but she sings and dances as well. She had learnt at the temple for the festivals held there, the rituals that were not to be observed by outsiders and the public festivals that drew crowds of hundreds. That was how she had met Gieve – Gieve, the travelling musician who had immediately fallen in love with Farangis’ dancing, and then with Farangis.

She was quiet and withdrawn and painfully sarcastic, and had been unpopular at the temple because of it. She had moved out as soon as she could, even though she continued to work there, and Gieve had begged her to share a flat with him because she’d never be able to afford one on her own starting out.

Initially she had agreed to babysit Arslan and Elam because she'd needed the money and they had seemed like sweet kids. By the time the two were ten she had somehow been accepted into their strange little family, the two children being taken care of by the two men who were too young to be their fathers.

 

“We’re home,” Arslan calls into the apartment, and hears Jaswant reply.

“Welcome back.” Jaswant never speaks much but Arslan doesn’t mind, even if Elam does. Jaswant lives on the floor below and Arslan secretly thinks that he’s just lonely.

He chatters away as he sits beside Elam while they work and when they finally finish they slump onto one of the sofas in silence.

It’s a comfortable silence and Arslan puts his head on Elam’s shoulder and is tempted to fall asleep, even though it’s barely six o’clock and he’s not really tired.

“Hey, Elam,” Arslan says. “Do you think Daryun and Narsus and I are from rich families?”

“Narsus was,” Elam replies shortly. “I think you and Daryun were. But I don’t know.”

“I see.” Arslan grabs hold of Elam’s hand and Elam relaxes slightly, as though the thought that his family could be taken away from him was even slightly feasible and had scared him.

 

Narsus and Daryun had been something like Elam and Arslan when they were younger.

Of course, they had grown up in uncomfortably big houses with uncomfortably distant relatives. But they themselves had been inseparable and despite the constant bickering were closer to each other than anyone else on earth.

Their families were both ridiculously high on the social ladder, in the upper echelons of society and so the two had had few other friends until they had been thrown out.

Narsus had been kicked out three years before Daryun but the two stayed in touch, through letters and emails and texts. When Daryun was kicked out and forced to take Arslan with him, lest the boy starve or be at the mercy of his family or the system, Narsus had already been living alone long enough that he was able to help them, a little.

They took it in turns caring for Arslan so that at least one of them could be working most of the time and when Elam started living with Narsus a year later they took turns caring for him too.

It was tense, their relationship, but never strained. Both wanted something more but they couldn’t quite find the time for it.

They had been forced to grow up far too fast, and were determined that Arslan and Elam wouldn’t suffer like they did. So Narsus lectured every morning and evening and Daryun worked at a garage at odd hours and as their family had expanded their lives had got infinitely easier.

 

“Elam. How are we going to do parents’ evening?”

“Oh, god.”

It is a warm day, warm enough that they don’t need their jumpers on and the sheets of paper in their bags inviting their parents to the school to meet the teachers are disproportionately heavy.

“They’ll all want to go, won’t they?”

“Yeah.”

“We can’t send five people to parents’ evening,” Arslan says. “The teacher would be terrified.”

“Especially with those five. And none of them are old enough to be looking after us.” Elam groans. “We can’t do this.”

“Narsus will come up with something.” Arslan sounds only slightly desperate. “Maybe we can persuade them to just let Daryun and Narsus go.”

“If we got Daryun and Jaswant to go the teacher would be too afraid to ask any bad questions.”

“Narsus and Farangis could probably confuse them into not asking anything weird.”

They walk in silence for a few moments, trying desperately to figure out what to do. It is late in the day, late enough that they would usually be home by now but for once everyone is working late and so there will be no one home until five, when Alfreed gets back. Their apartments are too small but they are too empty with just the two of them and Arslan finds the squeaking pipes and creaking floors unnerving.

“Narsus and Jaswant can meet your teacher, and Daryun and Farangis and Gieve can meet mine,” Arslan finally says. “They shouldn’t argue with that.”

 

Alfreed had been twelve when she’d fallen in love with Narsus.

She is sixteen now, old enough to know that what she has is a childish crush, old enough to know that Narsus has eyes for someone else and loves her anyway, in the same way he loves Elam and Arslan.

Her family are noisy and crude and take up so much space that there is barely room for a scrawny sixteen year old girl and so she spends most of her free time at Daryun’s apartment, bickering with Elam and listening, wide-eyed, to stories Farangis tells. She feels safe there, in a way that nowhere else in the dirty city that they live in has to offer.

 

Farangis has fallen asleep on their sofa and so has Alfreed, and Arslan and Elam are already asleep in Arslan’s room. Daryun carries Alfreed to his room, and then Farangis. They have shared his bed before and he pulls the covers over the two so they aren’t at the mercy of the cold air. It is too late to take them back to their own apartments.

Gieve is snoring softly on one sofa, and Daryun pulls a blanket over him. He then turns to Narsus, who is asleep on the same couch that Farangis and Alfreed had been on.

He sighs and grabs a blanket and seats himself next to him, arranging them both in the way they are least likely to wake up with cricks in their necks, and falls asleep immediately against Narsus’ warmth.

 

Often, Elam wants to hold Arslan’s hand as they walk home from school together.

They are in the same year but not the same classes and so don’t see each other for the hours and hours that school lasts. They both have other friends, other people to talk to and eat lunch with and work with, but it’s not quite the same.

He doesn’t really know why he wants to hold Arslan’s hand. He used to, a lot, when they were younger. This feels a little like that, but it also feels somewhat different.

He never does try and take Arslan’s hand, even though Arslan wouldn’t mind.

 

There is always someone home when they get back from school at four o’clock.

Jaswant is there every Monday and sometimes on Thursdays, and Gieve is there most days, just not Wednesdays. Farangis usually has Tuesdays off and so is there when Arslan and Elam get home. Alfreed has to work every day apart from Saturday and Sunday and so she doesn’t get back until five or six every day but she comes over at the weekends, though Elam suspects that’s more to do with Narsus than with himself and Arslan. Daryun is usually available to fill in the missing gaps, due to the odd hours he works and Narsus has the most regular schedule of all, getting home at seven every weekday and being there all weekend.

He gets school holidays off too, and so the job of looking after Arslan and Elam when school is out usually falls to him.

 

They go to one of Farangis and Gieve’s gigs one day, for once not held in a seedy nightclub that minors aren’t allowed in but at a slightly more upscale bar. Farangis seems to attract higher-brow clients, seems somewhat more refined than Gieve.

Gieve likes the seedy nightclubs and dirty bars but he loves watching Farangis sing and get even a fraction of the recognition she deserves and so makes an effort to dress up, in somewhat stylish clothes and tries to sort his hair.

Farangis would look stunning in a bin bag but also has a collection of pretty clothes and when Arslan and Elam and Daryun and Narsus and Alfreed and Jaswant come to see them one day the two look and sound stunning together, simple and complex rhythms and melodies and harmonies that are so unique to the two of them.

They are popular in the underground scene, the _something_ music that they make sounding like nothing else and at the same time achingly familiar and the only ones who haven’t been brought to tears by it are Daryun and Jaswant. Arslan doesn’t know what to call their style but it’s fast and low and Gieve’s guitar is heavy and resonates through the rooms that they play in.

Daryun and Narsus went to one of Gieve’s solo performances once, together, alone, and the difference between the Gieve who performed with Farangis and the Gieve who performed without her was almost as striking as the difference between Gieve on and off the stage. It was lonely and charged and both decided, for unsaid reasons, that going alone together was not happening again.

 

“Who are you?”

They get a visit one day, from a man slightly older than Daryun with a scar on his face, and Arslan would have been afraid to let him into their apartment but Daryun recognises him and ushers him into their flat.

He had shooed Elam and Jaswant into Arslan’s bedroom first though, and as Arslan kneels at the table across from the scarred man he wonders why, and if it would be rude for him to go and hide in the bedroom too. This man is scary and familiar.

“What do you want, Hermes?” Daryun sounds angry and it dawns on Arslan that this man might be related to them, might be family.

He doesn’t open his mouth to ask.

“I was told to check up on you.”

Hermes is tall and beautiful and elegantly dressed; the long dark purple coat hung by the door looks like it’s worth more than the apartment they’re in and his silver-framed glasses have an impossibly intricate pattern etched into them, subtle and striking.

“We’re fine. What do you want, Hermes?”

“Nothing more than that. Arslan. It’s been a while,” Hermes pauses and smiles at him and it sends shivers down his spine. “Do you remember me?”

“No. I do apologise.” Arslan forces his voice to stay soft and relaxed and smiles innocently at the man. Daryun feels ready to pounce beside him.

“I suppose that’s to be expected. You are both doing well, yes?”

Their speech patterns are remarkably similar and Arslan resists the urge to squirm.

“Yes, thank you. I don’t understand why we should warrant a check-up, but thank you for your concern.” Arslan bows his head a little and smiles again. “Was there anything else?”

“No,” Hermes says, and stands up. “I can see myself out. I’m terribly sorry to have intruded.”

The door clicks shut behind him and Arslan slumps against Daryun, breathing out heavily. Elam sticks his head out from the bedroom door and pulls a face.

“Who was that?”

Jaswant’s voice is quiet, as it always is, but Arslan flinches into Daryun anyway. Elam sits beside him and takes his hand.

“That was your brother, Arslan.”

Daryun’s voice is colder than ice and Arslan stares up at him.

“Half-brother, half-cousin. The child of your mother and your uncle.”

Narsus would have been so much better at explaining this to them but Narsus isn’t here. Daryun steels himself.

“Can you wait?” Arslan says quietly. “I want everyone to know.”

“Are you sure?” Daryun isn’t. Daryun wouldn’t want anyone to know. “Shouldn’t you make that choice after hearing about it?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

Arslan curls in on himself and Daryun wraps an arm around him and Elam lays against his other side and Jaswant takes his free hand and for a peaceful moment, Hermes’ presence is forgotten.

 

They had met Jaswant when Arslan was twelve.

Initially he had scared Arslan, because he was so tall and silent and stern. But then he had smiled slightly at Arslan, just once, just a little, and he had looked enough like Daryun that Arslan could never think of him as scary again.

Jaswant looks nothing like Daryun, but Arslan could tell they weren’t dissimilar.

He lives on the floor below theirs and occasionally gets visits from a man he doesn’t call father but idolises like one anyway. He seems to have no one else and so Arslan is grateful that he managed to find them.

Narsus had trusted him and so everyone else had, because Narsus was probably the best judge of character they had.

 

In the end, it is Narsus who explains Arslan’s lineage to them all.

There are eight of them crammed into the living room meant for four at most and Narsus sits between Daryun and Elam across from Arslan and tells him that when Arslan had been five, his father had disowned him from the family because he suspected he wasn’t his son.

Arslan’s mother had not loved his father, but she hadn’t really had a choice in who she married.

“Officially, the man who came to visit you earlier is your cousin,” Narsus tells him. “The son of your father’s brother. But in reality –”

“I am not my father’s child.” Arslan’s eyes are full of something, something sad and relieved. Maybe he is just glad not to be in the dark anymore.

“And so in reality he is your half-brother,” Narsus finishes. “Daryun was disowned at about the same time as you, over a quarrel with your father.” He doesn’t elaborate. No one asks him to. “Your father is the head of your family. What he says goes.”

“I see.”

Arslan looks relieved.

“I am grateful that I grew up here, and not with him,” he says. Narsus looks at him, calculating. “Thank you, Narsus, for telling me.”

He appears to pass whatever test Narsus is putting him through, and the eruption of noise drowns out any opportunity he has to ask about it. He thinks he would fail if he did so anyway.

 

There is not much space for hobbies in any of their apartments but Narsus has made room for his art.

Narsus calls it art. Daryun will not use bad language in front of Arslan and so has never talked about Narsus’ hobby in front of him.

There are sketchbooks filled with colourful and colourless images, canvases stretched over wooden frames and stained with heavy-smelling paints and lighter paints that do not smell so bad but are not as bright, not as thick.

He keeps it all in his own room, considerate at least of Elam, art materials balanced on bookshelves crammed with books and sketchbooks tucked into cracks that aren’t really there. He has a single bed because there is no room for anything else.

Sometimes the paintings vanish. Daryun refuses to believe he has managed to sell them but Narsus insists that this is the case, that there is someone willing to pay for his work.

 

“We should get a house.”

For once there are just three of them, and it is lonely. They are lying on their backs on the concrete roof of their block, the hard surface cold through their clothes, Arslan between Daryun and Narsus.

“Oh?”

Narsus seems to know that Arslan is more asleep than awake, but in Arslan’s hazy state he would swear that Narsus knows everything.

“Mm. Should get one. With lots of rooms. Elam and I can share.”

“Who else will be living there?” Daryun is just tired enough and just happy enough to play along.

“Everyone. Farangis and Gieve and Jaswant and Alfreed and Elam and you two. And me.”

The stars are almost invisible above them, faint tiny pinpricks barely visible through light pollution but they’ve made the effort to come and see them anyway. It’s really too cold to, and they need to go inside soon, but for the moment they can watch the sky.

“How about that, Daryun?” Narsus sounds like he is joking but Narsus sounds like he is joking often. “I think our son just asked me to move in.”

“He’s my cousin,” says Daryun, for a lack of anything better to say. Narsus laughs softly. Arslan snores gently between them and for a moment they look at each other, the long years they’ve known each other enough to erase any potential awkwardness from their situation.

Daryun would have been perfectly happy to sit on the roof with the invisible stars above them forever but Arslan is asleep now, and he will get cold, and Daryun’s first duty has been to Arslan since Arslan was born.

It is with some unwillingness that he breaks the moment and scoops Arslan into his arms, leaving Narsus to get the blanket. Narsus follows him quietly downstairs to their floor and just as Daryun is fumbling with the key to the door in one hand and Arslan balanced awkwardly that Narsus kisses him, on the corner of the mouth, for just a second.

Daryun drops his keys and Narsus picks them up and opens the door for him. Daryun doesn’t move and Narsus is about to ask if he shouldn’t have done that, if he was reading the signals wrong and what he’d felt since he was fifteen was one-sided and unreciprocated and if they should pretend it hadn’t happened, when Daryun shifts Arslan in his arms a little and leans forwards to kiss him back.

This kiss lasts barely a second longer and is just as awkwardly placed and when Daryun pulls away he seems to have a little difficulty looking Narsus in the eye but when he does both of them see that nothing is going to change.

“Goodnight, Daryun.”

“Goodnight, Narsus.”

Daryun’s door clicks shut behind him and Narsus thinks _finally_.

 

“This is not going to work.” Gieve is sitting on their couch with a property magazine in his hands and another three on his lap.

“I think it is.” Arslan is knelt at their table with one of the four laptops they own between them in front of him and Elam.

“Arslan’s right. You all live here anyway.”

“Don’t be cranky, Daryun.” Narsus is sat on the arm of one of the sofas, leaning over his shoulder. Another of their laptops is on Daryun’s lap. “It’ll work.”

“If Narsus says so, then it will.” Farangis and Alfreed have the third laptop, because everyone knew that Alfreed would severely overestimate their price range of she was left on her own. “Ooh, there looks nice!”

“Alfreed,” Farangis warns, and Alfreed pouts a little. “It is a nice house,” she admits.

“I too, think this will work,” Jaswant says quietly. “I have faith.”

“As do I.” Farangis smiles at him and then returns to the screen. “As Daryun says, we do spend a lot of time in his apartment anyway.”

Gieve smiles in spite of himself, and then cocks his head at Elam. “Nothing inspiring to add?”

Elam shrugs. “It was Arslan’s idea,” he says. “Of course it’ll work.”

**Author's Note:**

> "oh i'll just write a quick thing on that weird au oh shit it's 4x as long as it was supposed to be and i had homework" - my gravestone probably


End file.
